Tokyo Mew Mew Omnibus Vol. 1

This is the big week for Viz manga, and my pick of the week is at the top of the alphabet: vol. 3 of Ai Ore, a gender-bender story about hard rock and romance, featuring a girl who is the "prince" of her all-girl school and a boy who is the "princess" of his school—and wants to join her band. Vol. 5 of the tough-girl comedy Oresama Teacher is another good pick, and if you go for the classics, this is the week to wrap up Death Note with vol. 6 of Death Note Black Edition, their two-in-one omnibus edition. For shonen fans, there's vol. 19 of Claymore,vol. 21 of D.Gray-Man, and the December issue of Shonen Jump—one of the last to appear in print before they shift to digital format.

Ai Ore Vol. 3

eaders who buy their manga in comics shops will see some new Kodansha titles on the shelves—these went out to bookstores last week, including vol. 1 of the Tokyo Mew Mew omnibus. This new edition of an older series (first published by Tokyopop) is a great magical-girl manga along the lines of Sailor Moon, but with animals instead of minerals: Through some sort of manga-style mixup, the DNA of normal girls is combined with the DNA of extinct animals, and the girls take on some of the animals' characteristics when they transform to battle aliens. It's a good, fun read, kind of silly but with lots of action. Also new to comics stores is vol. 1 of the Love Hina omnibus, collecting Ken Akamatsu's classic harem comedy.

Code Geass: Knight Vol. 4

A few weeks ago we saw Bandai put out a new volume of Code Geass: Queen, a side-story anthology geared for male readers, and now the ladies get their turn with vol. 4 of Code Geass: Knight, a set of stand-alone stories featuring the men of Code Geass.